Friday, February 4, 2011

Lions and Tigers and Vampires, oh Yuck!

But since this is one of the most popular YA book series out there, it really didn't need an introduction.

Enter the dark, magical world of the House of Night, a world very much like our own, except here vampyres have always existed.

One minute, sixteen-year-old Zoey Redbird is a normal teenager dealing with everyday high school stress: her cute boyfriend Heath, the school’s star quarterback who suddenly seems more interested in partying than playing ball; her nosy frenemy Kayla, who’s way too concerned with how things are going with Heath; her uber-tough geometry test tomorrow. The next, she’s Marked as a fledgling vampyre, forcing her to leave her ordinary life behind and join the House of Night, a boarding school where she will train to become an adult vampyre. That is, if she makes it through the Change—and not all of those who are Marked do.

I've seen this on the shelves for years now, and have always thought about picking it up, but I could never make myself do it. Probably because there are thirty thousand of them, and honestly a lot of series like this, especially vamp series are just too vapid to waste my time on. However, with the release of the latest in the series, Awakened, I thought I would give it a try. So, I did what I do for all books I can't get motivated to read, and checked it out on audiobook from the library.

Let me start with the reader. Wow, she was awful! Now, this is my own personal opinion, so you don't have to agree, but I've listened to a LOT of audiobooks, and this was one of the worst. The voice of Zoey-Bird was so dreary and depressing it almost made me want to jump off a building. Then there were her friends. The reader used a valley-girl-slash-southern hick-slash-old woman voice for most of them. The mentor's voice was all soft and slurred, half the time she sounded like she was high or something. It was....not good.

Usually if the reader isn't great, I can get past it, and still enjoy the story, if it's good. However, this story.....was NOT. Normally when I do a negative review, I still try to be nice and talk about what I liked, but honestly, this book just pissed me off. The main character came off very superior, insulting every possible group of people. She talked bad about goths, people who live in trailer parks, southerners (countrified folk), loser girls with black eyeliner, Christians, celebrities (Sarah Jessica Parker, Jessica Simpson, Tom Cruise, Pamela Anderson), Abercrombie, and on and on. It was SO incredibly annoying. And when she wasn't bashing things, she was like an advertisement for them. Talk about product placement!

Then there was the story...if there was one. Hardly anything happened in the entire book. I feel like if you're going to start a series, the first one needs to be awesome, with it's own story arc. I just didn't think this book had much of anything going for it. And Zoey certainly didn't help matters. She was about as dumb as a rock.

Example: The Dark Daughters performed a ritual where they mixed the blood of a willing "fledgeling" with wine and drank it. They called the donor of the blood "the refrigerator" or "snack bar" and he had bandages over his wrist. Zoey says, "Wait a minute. I don't get it. Refrigerator? Snack Bar?"

Ummm....Zoey.....aren't you at school because you're becoming a VAMPIRE?? I wouldn't think that would be too hard to figure out. Maybe the author thought that we were dumb, so she had to make Zoey dumb, so she could explain things to us that she didn't think we'd "get," I don't know. Of course she's "inexplicably drawn to" a boy who's "inexplicably drawn to" her, without any rhyme or reason. Making out with each other after their first conversation. But he did have some totally amazing pickup lines like, "Don't you think baby corn is scary?" Luckily there's just enough smuttiness to keep some interested. I don't think I've read so much about BJs in my life. Wait, I know I haven't....and have NO desire to. It was just trashy.

So, if you haven't guessed, I hated this book. I definitely will not be reading any more of them, and I'm dying to know how they are so popular.

23 comments:

My cousin gave me her set after she'd finished with them, because she's a compulsive series reader, but didn't really care for the books. I'd been thinking about reading them, so she passed them along to me. Now I have 7 or 8 books sitting here, waiting to be read and I don't want too! :(

I gave them a serious try, up to 3 books in the series. I was a trooper! The author is local and I REALLY wanted to to like the books. I didn't for some of the same reasons you listed. But, I do know many that love them, so I guess as usually to each his own. I still want to do a House of Night pic tour sometime though. Some of the places the author writes about are neat places in the city I call home. I DO like that aspect, just not the content or story of the book.

*whew* I thought I would always be the only person who hated this book! LOL Seriously, I thought it sounded like a little kid trying to force a story out. They lost me when the character said "Poopy". lol

I read the first two books, they were awful all the way through them and then there's excitement at the very end. But the writing and the characters annoyed ALOT....but anyways, I agree with you, not worth the time when there's other good books to really try.

Hmmm I have the first four sitting here on my self that I either picked up from the used bookstore or from bookmooch, but I have not even remotely felt like reading any of them. Maybe I will just take them back to the used bookstore and get something else. I don't want to waste my time reading something I won't enjoy when there are so many great books out there just waiting for me. Thanks for the honest review - I really enjoy reading exactly what people think of books and this helped me out a lot. :)

This review made me laugh. I can't comment on the bad audio cause I've not heard it, but you're dead on about the story itself!! I've questioned how it's so popular for a very long time!! I actually didn't totally hate book 1, cheesy and stupid yes, but didn't hate it. By book 4 I'd had enough of it though and it went from silly waste of time to ridiculous. The series just gets worse and worse. I'd love someone to explain why it's so popular, I really would, because all I got from it was very cliched, irritating characters and a very weak, dragged out story.

I HATED this book so much that I wanted to rip it up in shreds and strangle zoey. apart from being trashy and discrimminative, she was just PLAIN DUMB.not to mention that the writing was just horrible and extremely juvenile. I suppose the authors wrote it that way because they wanted to make the characters look hip and cool, but instead they just came across as silly. all in all, the book was terrible.

I am so with you! I listened to this series when I was new to YA paranormal and didn't know any better. Now that I have a lot more books read, I don't think I would even finish this book. You're right about the reader too - so bad.

I agreed to try this series with my friends daughter. Of course she loved them, and I couldn't make it through half of the 1st book. Not exactly what teens need to be looking at for a good book. The mother/daughter team tried too hard to be "cool" and it showed.

I found this series to be quite a disappointment (I only made it through two and half of the books). It was easy to tell that it was written by two people because it a) didn't flow very well and b) was just trying to hard to be popular and appeal to the general masses with out providing any actual content worth reading.Thanks for sharing your toughts. ^_^

This review was PERFECT. I laughed out loud and shared it with my coworker! I too hated this book. I stopped at book 1 and never continued. I have bought the entire series for my library, but never recommend them. Bravo and thanks for speaking up!

You know, I have had this on my maybe I will buy list forever. I still can't seem to get myself to read it. I don't know if I'll give it an opportunity but if I do, it will be much later after I have finished some other greatly reviewed books, like Anna and the French Kiss.